Incarnate Word or hills and forests?

In her recent Hecker Lecture, TEC Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori reflected on the significance of the Incarnation:

That sense of the sacral reality of all of creation has been much resisted not only by strands of Western Christianity, but indeed by some strands of preceding Jewish monotheism. There is an obvious and necessary tension between seeing only God as ultimately holy and being willing to look for holy fingerprints on all that God has created. At the same time, once we note that God has shared God’s own being with us in human flesh in the Incarnation, it is perhaps easier to begin to see that God’s presence may be encountered in the hills and forests, or Leviathan, whom God made for sport.

Whatever this is meant to be, it is not what the catholic tradition has meant by the Incarnation.  God did not become flesh so that "God's presence may be encountered in the hills and forests".  God became flesh so that his presence would be encountered in the cross and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, proclaimed in the Church's Word and Sacraments.  As Balthasar says, summarising the patristic tradition, "he who says Incarnation, says Cross" ... not hills and forests.

+Katharine, however, believes her reading of the Incarnation is grounded in the patristic witness:

There is also a patristic root to this sacramental understanding, particularly in the theologizing of Athanasius and Irenaeus, and the doctrine of theosis or divinization to which it gave rise. Perhaps the best shorthand summary is, “God became human in order that we might become divine.”

The "shorthand summary" does not, of course, quite do justice to Irenaeus and Athanasius.  Irenaeus' insistence on the flesh-and-blood reality of the Incarnation is inextricably linked to the saving significance of the Passion:

If he was not born, neither did he die.  And if he did not die, neither did he rise from the dead.  And if he did not rise from the dead, he did not conquer death and abolish its reign ... (Adversus Haereses, D 39).

Similarly for Athanasius, the Incarnation is ordered towards the Passion:

For he alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.  For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible Word of God entered our world (De Incarnatione, 7-8).

Contrary to +Katharine, the patristic witness to the Incarnation of the Word cannot be separated from the salvific event of Cross, Passion and Resurrection.  Indeed, to proclaim the Incarnation as salvific apart from Cross, Passion and Resurrection is to reject the patristic witness.  And this is precisely what +Katharine does.  She regards the Incarnation as ordered towards God's presence in hills and forests, whereas Irenaeus and Athanasius regard the Incarnation as ordered towards saving Cross and Resurrection.

The Presiding Bishop's lecture exemplifies a tendency identified by John Milbank:

The ‘incarnationalist’ rhetoric of Anglicanism can sometimes be used in such a fashion as to suggest that God’s will can be derived from a mere immersion in present realities.

It is not in "present realities" - or hills and forests - in which we behold God: it is in the scandalous particularity of the Incarnate Word, Crucified and Risen.

+Katharine's account of the Incarnation - torn from Scripture, Tradition and catholic Creeds - does, however, emphasise the importance of the call given by Harding and Wells in Teaching Jesus and the Unity of the Church:

The Episcopal Church needs a movement among a critical mass of leaders, especially priests and bishops of the church, to place the teaching and preaching of basic Christian doctrines about the person and work of Christ at the center of their ministry. This could take the form of line-by-line exposition of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. Perhaps the House of Bishops could undertake together a study of “the scandal of particularity”: that through the Incarnation, atoning death, and glorious resurrection of the Son of God, the Father has provided the point of unity and reconciliation — salvation — for the warring children of the world.

In light of +Katharine's lecture, the need for such a movement is starkly self-evident.

"Though not addressed in plenary"

From today's ACNS briefing on Day 3 of the Primates' Meeting:

The question was raised, though not addressed in plenary, about how far Primates had a role in safeguarding the life of the Communion as a whole.

So let's get this right.  At least 7 Primates refuse to attend the meeting because of the unilateral actions of TEC and ACC.  Significant numbers of bishops similarly refused to attend the last Lambeth Conference.  The entire Communion is debating the Covenant as means to enhance our experience of koinonia.  The Primates' Meeting is one of the Instruments of Communion.

And what happens?

The question of the "life of the Communion as a whole" was raised ... "though not in plenary".  This, during a day in which the meeting "began to more closely consider ‘primacy’".

The Windsor Report reflected on the calls made by successive Lambeth Conferences on the role of the Primates' Meeting:

It is the task of the present Commission to consider proposals made at the Lambeth Conferences in 1988 and 1998, and reiterated in To Mend the Net, for the primates to have an “enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters (104).

The Report went on to recommend an explicit Communion-wide role for the Primates' Meeting:

The Primates' Meeting should serve formally as the Standing Committee of the Lambeth Conference and as such should monitor developments in furtherance of resolutions of the Lambeth Conference in addition to the process of reception. This will allow the Primates' Meeting to begin the enhanced responsibility which successive Lambeth Conferences have recommended. It should be a primary forum for the strengthening of the mutual life of the provinces, and be respected by individual primates and the provinces they lead as an instrument through which new developments may be honestly addressed (Appendix 1, 5).

The plenary's failure to address "how far Primates had a role in safeguarding the life of the Communion as a whole" is not just evidence of poor judgment in the face of Anglicanism's challenges - it is a denial of the role and vocation of the Primates' Meeting as set out in the Windsor Report.  For those of us committed to the Instruments of Communion, it is a profoundly saddening state of affairs.

"Seeking a common mind" - the call to conciliarity

It was an explicit statement of 'conciliar Anglicanism'. Archbishop Mouneer Anis' address, to what appears to be have been an excellent Mere Anglicanism conference in South Carolina, definitively states what 'communion' should mean for Anglicanism - conciliarity:

Within the Anglican Communion we already have what we may call, we may call, a Conciliar body which is the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of bishops and Primates. This body represents all the faithful within the Communion and is capable by the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in consultation with ecumenical partners to express the mind of the Communion regarding the interpretation of controversial issues.

Unfortunately, the Lambeth Conference resolutions are not binding. In other words the Lambeth Conference as well as the Primates Meeting does not have the executive authority of a Conciliar Council ...

We have also fallen when we lost the Conciliar concept that characterized the early church and the early days of the Anglican Communion. The individualistic and hedonistic spirit of our world today has penetrated the Communion deeply. This encouraged some churches to interpret the Scriptures without listening to and consulting with the other churches within the Communion. The interpretations that are produced by Lambeth Conferences have only a moral authority and are not binding ...

The absence of conciliarity and the individualistic interpretation of the Scriptures led the Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada to take decisions in the light of what is prevalent and accepted in the culture; not in the light of the teaching of the Scriptures and what is accepted by the rest of the Communion.

To be a communion, as the Archbishop emphasises, requires conciliarity: it is how the Church expresses the reality of being communion in her decision-making.  In the absence of conciliarity, decision-making and decisions are, in the Archbishop's words, "individualistic".

That this is not how Anglicanism has exercised authority is far from being decisive.  It ignores the fact that a deep respect for the conciliarity of patristic catholicism is written into the Anglican formularies.  It disregards the incipient conciliarism of Article XX.  Above all, perhaps, it does not heed that Anglicans have discerned a call to deeper, more authentic communion - not least, because of the 'turn to the church' witnessed in much 20th century Anglican, Roman and Orthodox theologies and in the ecclesiology of ARCIC:

The sacramental nature of the Church as sign, instrument and foretaste of communion (ARCIC II The Church as Communion, 24).

This ecclesiology found expression in the Windsor Report - a report, after all, of the Lambeth Commission on Communion:

The communion we enjoy with God in Christ and by the Spirit, and the communion we enjoy with all God's people living and departed, is the specific practical embodiment and fruit of the gospel itself, the good news of God's action in Jesus Christ to deal once and for all with evil and to inaugurate the new creation (A3).

The divine foundation of communion should oblige each church to avoid unilateral action on contentious issues which may result in broken communion. It is an ancient canonical principle that what touches all should be decided by all. The relational nature of communion requires each church to learn more fully what it means to be part of that communion, so that its members may be fulfilled and strengthened in and through their relations with other churches. Communion obliges each church to foster, respect and maintain all those marks of common identity, and all those instruments of unity and communion, which it shares with fellow churches, seeking a common mind in essential matters of common concern: in short, to act interdependently, not independently (B51).

Conciliarity is how we as Anglicans can give expression to our call to be communion.  Archbishop Mouneer has done us a great service by so clearly and explicitly identifying that which will allow Anglicanism to live out this calling - the calling inherent in what it is to be church.

'Wait for one another'? No - it's merely "a few absentees"

It seems appropriate that the Primates' Meeting commences on the day that brings the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity to a close and on the feast of the Conversion of St Paul.  Unity and encountering the Risen Christ - both of which the Communion needs to experience afresh.

On the Fulcrum site, Andrew Goddard explicitly names the cause of our impaired communion:

The problem with TEC is therefore not only that it has now demonstrated it is paying no regard to the Communion moratoria and rejects Communion teaching. It is that it has done this despite for the last seven years saying otherwise and it is doing so in a way that not only fails to engage the rest of the Communion but is internally incoherent and now often explicitly challenging not just the Christian sexual ethic but the Christian doctrine of marriage.

TEC's arrogance in the face of the Communion was unfortunately demonstrated yet again, this time in the words of Presiding Bishop,Katharine Jefferts Schori.  In her statement on the Meeting she declared that she was "deeply grateful that we may begin to focus on issues that are highly significant in local contexts as well as across the breadth of the Anglican Communion" (emphasis mine).

In other words, those of us across the Communion - the vast majority of Anglicans who endorse Lambeth 1.10, in unity with the Christian tradition of moral reflection across the centuries - have been focusing on issues that are not "highly significant".  What a perfect demonstration of how the spirit of unilateralism, rather than that of communion, is shaping the theology and practice of too many within TEC.

The title of the story on the ENS site also speaks of the arrogance of unilateralism:

Primates set to meet in Dublin, with a few absentees.

A few absentees?  It is with such dismissive terminology that the ENS refers to the Primates of the Province of the Indian Ocean, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Nigeria, Uganda, South East Asia, the Southern Cone and West Africa.

This is not koinonia.  This is not what the Apostle Paul meant when he exhorted the churches to "wait for one another" (1 Corinthians 11:33) and "not to please ourselves" (Romans 15:1).  Paul's vision of the church's call to communion and unity flowed from his encounter with the Risen Christ - "why do you persecute me?"  To foster, enhance and deepen our communion is integral to the call to be unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.

The Primates' Meeting cannot let TEC's unilaterialism go without challenge, rebuke and correction.  The call to communion requires nothing less.

Reimagining comprehensiveness

The tragedy is that the Ordinariate is awake-up call to do things differently, to look at ourselves again.  Do we really want to be ungenerous, churlish and flint-faced to ecclesiastical dissenters?  Or do we want to be comprehensive and embracing of the many networks which the Church of England has always comprised?

Andrew Carey's wise words should give us pause for thought.  Carey argues that the CofE should reconsider its refusal to share church buildings with congregations who joined the Ordinariate:

Where is the harm in allowing congregations which are now at odds with the Anglican settlement to maintain access with the buildings which they themselves have maintained and cherished? The Church of England has too many buildings for its now weakened ambitions and in many areas we can barely maintain a presence. In other areas we have a preponderance of failing churches.

This call for a generosity of spirit, reflecting Anglicanism's historic ability to embrace a variety of both theological perspectives and ecclesial experiences, has much to commend it in the context of a dechristianised culture.  It also would lead to a positive response to the pastoral letter issued today twelve CofE bishops in the Anglo-catholic tradition.  The bishops urge the CofE to provide episcopal oversight for the Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda. The Society is described on its website:

an ecclesial community that is both loyal to the traditions of the Church of England and yet, because of the clear difference of views about the ordination of women, has its own bishops with jurisdiction and so a guaranteed sacramental and missional life.

Can the CofE, can Anglicanism, afford to lose congregations, parishes, believers, deacon, priests and bishops committed to the Anglican vocation and mission as lived out by those affiliated to the Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda?  Does the Anglican vocation and mission not lead us to demonstrate a generosity of spirit that would allow Anglicanism to continue to embrace those with misgivings over the ordination of women to the episcopate - the same misgivings shared by the ancient communions of Rome and Constantinople - while yet sharing in the common life of our own Communion?

Across the Atlantic, perhaps similar lessons are to be learnt.  We learnt last week that a court ordered Bishop Iker and the Diocese of Fort Worth to surrender all properties to TEC Diocese of Forth Worth, one of a series of legal disputes involving TEC and dissenting Episcopalians.  Do Carey's words, however, not also apply to TEC?

Where is the harm in allowing congregations which are now at odds with the Anglican settlement to maintain access with the buildings which they themselves have maintained and cherished? [TEC] has too many buildings for its now weakened ambitions and in many areas [it] can barely maintain a presence.

Perhaps the Anglican vocation is now to display the generosity of grace in the midst of the pains of division and discord - to carry in our ecclesial body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our ecclesial body.  And in doing so, we may rediscover something of Anglicanism's vocation to serve the mission of the church catholic: to be one, so that the world may believe.

On how not to respond to the Ordinariate

It was only to be expected that Anglican reactions to the Ordinariate would give expression to the pain felt by many in our Communion at recent events.  Giles Fraser's sermon in Westminster Cathedral was quite explicit in this regard:

From the Anglican perspective, this new invitation to swim the Tiber can sometimes have a slightly predatory feel; in corporate terms, a little like a take over bid in some broader power play of church politics.

Giles referred to the sermon in his Church Times' column and voiced a critique of the Ordinariate with which many of us will identify - it's difficult to see what is distinctively Anglican about it:

It was on the very spot where three former C of E bishops com­pleted their lightning change to Roman orders, doing in two weeks what others take seven years to achieve. It felt rude to mention the goings-on of last Saturday. It felt dishonest not to.

In truth, I still do not understand the whole idea of the Ordinariate. Apparently, it is some way of folding aspects of Anglicanism into the broader Roman Church. But which aspects: some hymns, synodical gov­ernment, wives? Most of those who would avail themselves of this option have been crypto-Romanists for years: much more Roman Missal than Book of Common Prayer.

Amidst the pain, there is a sign of hope ... and a worrying development.

It is appropriate for those who live by grace to begin with hope.  The hope is that the recently announced Covenant between the Anglican diocese of Qu’Appelle and the Roman archdiocese of Regina will offer a new pattern for Anglican-Roman relations.  The Covenant explicitly affirms the ARCIC agreements:

Through our international dialogue, we have reached significant agreement on the nature of the eucharist and ministry. We have also reached convergence on authority in the Church, the nature and mission of the Church, salvation and justification, discipleship and morals, and more recently, the place of Mary, Mother of Jesus, in the life and doctrine of the Church.

Of all of the arrangements for practical expression to be given to the Covenant, perhaps the most significant is the commitment "to regularly remembering the other church and its leaders, and our relations, in our intercessions at each Sunday eucharist".  Praying for one another bishop and diocese at the altar is a profound expression of (albeit interrupted) communion.

The worrying development?  It also involves ARCIC.  Today's Sunday Telegraph notes that CofE pain and anger regarding the Ordinariate and quotes the Bishop of Guildford, Christopher Hill in relation to the forthcoming General Synod debate on the ARCIC report Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ:

Bishop Hill admits that the tone of the debate is likely to be more "belligerent" than it would have been before the Ordinariate, adding: "It's so sensitive because in the Church of England you can have a variety of views [towards Mary], but the Roman Catholic Church only has one understanding."

Of all I have read in relation to the Ordinariate nothing has depressed me more.  Surely Anglicanism wishes to demonstrate that the ARCIC process is of infinitely more value than the Ordinariate?  So why, in what is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a schoolyard tantrum, hit out at ARCIC?  What is more, the organisation Fulcrum - in its response to Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ - rightly stated that "the sensitive spiritual context of this discussion means that we are 'treading on holy ground'".  And yet this is the ground that the CofE General Synod may choose to express anger over the Ordinariate?

Anglicanism's reverence for the Theotokos is fundamentally formed by a deeply Augustinian sense of reserve in face of the intimate mystery of this aspect of the Incarnation.  By all means, let this shape our response to the ARCIC report.  The Anglican tradition's reflection on the role of the Blessed  Virgin in the mystery of salvation, however, deserves more - much more - than to be set aside in order to pursue the power-games of ecclesiastical politics.  To act in such manner would, ironically, suggest that the Ordinariate offers more hope than ARCIC.

Kingdom and cuts

During the past week I had the pleasure of delivering the most recent lunchtime lecture in St Bartholomew's, Belfast - "Kingdom and Cuts: Is a Christian vision of the common good possible in an age of austerity?" 

Below, my conclusions on how Anglicans can begin to think about a vision of the common good in the present economic context.

1. Don't be like William Temple.  For those of us who are Anglicans that is a somewhat controversial statement.  Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-44, was a formative figure in Anglican social teaching in the 20^th century.  But amidst all of his achievements, we cannot avoid what Labour MP Frank Field has said about a man who he counts as a ‘hero’: Field states that Temple propagated “economic nonsense”.  If the Christian tradition is to be a serious contributor in the public realm, it must avoid the default economic nonsense that unfortunately has characterized a number of Christian contributions to this debate.

2. Don't be prophets.  I admit it is a somewhat sweeping statement and it is not meant to detract from the Church’s calling to be prophetic.  Here, however, I quote Oliver O'Donovan: “the critical edge of the encounter between belief and unbelief often locates itself where faith displays an ability to comprehend the tasks of life.  It was an evil day for Christian thought when prophecy became the fashionable category for political reflection in place of practical reasonableness”.   It is not prophetic to deny the tasks of life, even in an age of austerity and a time of cuts.  Practicable reasonableness is not the appropriate primary category to judge Christian moral action in the face of apartheid or Communism or Nazism: but it is in debating the timing and extent of an age of austerity.

3. Recognise the present as a time for metanoia (‘repentance’/change of mind).  How comfortable were we, the western Church, during that long decade of prosperity following 1989, a time famously declared by one commentator to be ‘the end of History’? I have in mind the words of C.S. Lewis in September 1939: "if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon".

4. Let the Church be the Church.  When the church gathers as the eucharistic assembly we proclaim the saving narrative of the Triune God in the Nicene Creed.  It is this saving narrative which ultimately delivers us from conforming to ideology and compels us to challenge the ideologies around us.  Here we see the dignity and vocation of the human person revealed in creation, incarnation, redemption and future glory.  It is this, not the Right's individualism and small state nor the Left's welfarism and big government, which should determine how we, the Church, respond to the era of austerity and seek to shape how we as a society approach reductions in public spending.  This produces no policy template for this cut or against that cut, but seeks to create a community of character that will allow the virtues, the common good to shape our society's economic discourse and decision-making, irrespective of whether the Coalition or Labour are correct on the timing and extent of the cuts.

St Mary the Virgin, Irbid, Jordan

From the weekly review of the Anglican Communion News Service, news that a new Anglican church - dedicated to St Mary the Virgin - has been consecrated in Irbid, a major city in the north of Jordan.  Above the altar is the inscription in Arabic, "My soul doth magnify the Lord".

At a time when Anglicans ponder the implications of the Ordinariate and the divisions ahead of the Primates' Meeting in Dublin, St. Mary the Virgin, Irbid is a glorious reminder of the catholicity of our Communion - proclaiming the Incarnate Word, born of the Theotokos, in continuity with the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East.

(For further information see the Jerusalem and Middle East Church Society.)

Kasper - ARCIC III or Ordinariate?

Amidst the media focus on the Ordinariate, Cardinal Walter Kasper - formerly head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity - used his speech at an event held in his honour by +Rowan to refocus Anglican and Roman attention on a wider and more significant agenda:

I think there are two fundamental problems:

First: What does it mean to confess the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church and therefore what does it mean to realize this catholicity in its non confessional but all embracing original meaning. What does it mean to be the one Church of Christ in the many churches? How to realize unity, which is not at all identical with uniformity, a unity without fusion or absorption (John Paul II) so that we become more and more one Church and nevertheless many churches remain (J. Ratzinger)? We know that this touches the problem of primacy, which for both is not an easy one, because it – besides all the theological questions, which arise – is so deeply rooted in consciousness of this country and its history and in our Catholic convictions too.

The second question and challenge we are confronted with, is: How to approach with our message the present modern or postmodern mentality in our secularized and pluralistic Western society. Here difficult ethical and pastoral problems arise and our faithfulness to the Gospel message is challenged. But what means faithfulness beyond fundamentalism and liberalism? These are not easy common questions even the answers are sometimes different.

Not easy questions; but for the good of our people we are not allowed to give in. It is our duty to do our best in order find common answers, as we are decided to do in the now beginning third phase of our ARCIC dialogues. May God bless them and bestow his holy Spirit to all members of the new Commission!

What does it mean for the Anglican and Roman communions to confess catholicity in secularised societies?  Such an agenda for ARCIC III, and not the Ordinariate, should be the focus for renewed relationships between our two communions.

Ordinariate, Peter and orthodoxy

It is nothing less than the reconfiguring of Anglicanism by union with the Petrine centre and its criteria of orthodoxy.

Those are the words of Fr Aidan Nichols at the inaugural eucharist of the Ordinariate, celebrated in the Oxford Oratory on Sunday past.  Damian Thompson approvingly describes it as "a sweepingly ambitious statement of the Ordinariate’s purpose".  Perhaps.  It is, however, a "sweepingly ambitious statement" regarding the See of Rome - "the Petrine centre and its criteria of orthodoxy".  Orthodoxy, Nichols appears to suggests, emanates from Rome.

ARCIC has - in a manner surely more reflective of patristic experience - described the vocation of the See of Rome not in terms of being the necessary mechanism for orthodoxy but, rather, the servant of the church's experience of orthodoxy:

While the New Testament taken as a whole shows Peter playing a clear role of leadership it does not portray the Church's unity and universality exclusively in terms of Peter. The universal communion of the churches is a company of believers, united by faith in Christ, by the preaching of the word, and by participation in the sacraments assured to them by a pastoral ministry of apostolic order. In a reunited Church a ministry modeled on the role of Peter will be a sign and safeguard of such unity (Authority in the Church II, 9).

Orthodoxy is the centre, experienced through Word, Sacrament and apostolic ministry.  The Petrine ministry is called to be the servant of this experience.  Augustine's sermon on the feast of the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul appears to emphasise this very point - that orthodoxy is the gift given to the church, not merely to Peter:

It is not just one man that received these keys, but the Church in its unity. So this is the reason for Peter’s acknowledged pre-eminence, that he stood for the Church’s universality and unity, when he was told, "To you I am entrusting," what has in fact been entrusted to all. To show you that it is the Church which has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, listen to what the Lord says in another place to all his apostles: "Receive the Holy Spirit"; and immediately afterwards, "Whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven them; whose sins you retain, they will be retained".

What makes this distinction significant is the church's experience, first in the 11th and then again in the 16th century, that the exercise of the Petrine ministry by the See of Rome has not always served the experience of orthodoxy.  ARCIC acknowledged this history:

The leadership of the bishop of Rome has been rejected by those who thought it was not faithful to the truth of the Gospel and hence not a true focus of unity ...

In light of this history, Anglicanism and Orthodoxy have given different expression to the Petrine ministry.  Rather than the See of Rome, they have recognised this ministry in the oversight of primatial sees in particular and the episcopate more generally.  Why?  Precisely because they acknowledged the priority of the church over the Petrine ministry, of orthodoxy over the See of Rome.

It is difficult not to accept part of what Nichols states.  Anglicanism's present travails do indeed point to the reality that the Communion needs to be configured.  Such configuration, however, will arise from a rediscovery of orthodoxy.  It is the Tradition which makes us orthodox, not "the Petrine centre".

Genesis, patriarchy, and the Church's Story

Jane Williams' Comment is Free belief series on Genesis yesterday confronted the difficult reality of patriarchy in Genesis:


Genesis is a patriarchal narrative, through and through. Its world is one where women exist entirely as adjuncts to men, and where safety and success for women lie in marriage and reproduction. Monogamy and sexual fidelity are not expected of men. It is also a world where slavery and servitude is taken for granted. So the person with the least control over her own destiny is the female servant.  If there is a hint at the beginning of Genesis that this state of affairs is not part of the original ideal, it is accepted as inevitable for the rest of the narrative.

So how is the Church to read Genesis, recognising that patriarchy can have no place in the communion in which there is 'neither male nor female'?  Williams - not too convincingly - suggests that patriarchy of the text is undermined and critiqued by its reverence for the family:

This is probably special pleading, but both Judaism and Christianity emphasise the importance and sacredness of the family, and the authority and status of women within the home. While this has often been at best patronising and at worst oppressive, it has, arguably, led to the gradual growth in confidence and self-respect among women over the centuries, allowing them slowly to reclaim their own ability and responsibility to image God.

What is, perhaps, of at least equal significance is the fact that the narrative proclaimed by the Church and flowing from Genesis cannot be told without two women and their roles in salvation history - Eve's "happy fault" (Augustine) and Sarah our mother (Galatians 4:31).  As befits a narrative that will climax in the Incarnation, Eve and Adam, Sarah and Abraham display a scandalous particularity.  Grace is proclaimed in and through such scandalous particularity, in the midst of the violence of patriarchy - the grace that the Church supremely beholds in the bloodied body of the Crucified One.

What Williams terms as "the unabashed patriarchy of texts like Genesis" is undermined, critiqued and overturned by the narrative of which Genesis is but the beginning - the narrative of the Incarnation and Passion of the Word.  Without Eve and Sarah this narrative cannot be told.

"The Primates' meeting must be that place ..."

I am not entirely sure I agree with Peter Carrell's assessment of the timely challenge from the Anglican Communion Institute regarding the Primates' Meeting. Peter describes the statement as "a battering ram aimed squarely" at +Rowan.

Catholicity and Covenant, however, reads the ACI statement as a challenge to the Primates and, not least, to those Primates intending to boycott the meeting:

[The] answer is not to create a parallel structure – leaving aside whether it can succeed in gathering a sizeable number of all the conservative Primates when the dust settles. For that would not solve the problem of how to have a Council of the Church called ‘The Primates’ Meeting’, or one where the Primates did their job. It would merely defer and avoid the matter, and so leave it unresolved. The Primates’ Meeting must be that place where the integrity of the Instrument is worked through. If one does not attend the Dublin gathering, it remains the case that the Primates as individual leaders and as a body must propose and resolve how they will gather and do their work. Physical attendance may not be necessary at the month’s end and it is not going to happen anyway. But it remains the case that the composition and good working of the Primates as a Meeting, as a council, must be addressed by the Primates.

The alternative to a commitment to renewing the Primates' Meeting as an Instrument of Communion is a further rupture in Anglicanism's experience of koinonia:

Anything less is just a counsel of despair and a sure way to watch the Communion slide deeper into dysfunction and distrust.

Those of us who are appalled at the communion-denying acts of TEC and ACC have hard questions to ask of ourselves. We believe koinonia to be at the heart of the church's call to be the church, at the heart of catholicity. We affirm that the vocation of the Instruments of Communion is to deepen Anglicanism's experience of koinonia. Do we further this by undermining one of those Instruments, the Primates' Meeting? Catholicity and Covenant  has already stated the view that the Primates should attend, precisely in order to ensure that the meeting's vocation as an Instrument of Communion is sustained. This, as the ACI statement recognises, will not happen:

It will be the case that a major block of the Communion will not be represented at the Meeting.

As ACI has articulated, there is now an urgent and pressing need for all those concerned with Anglicanism's vocation to catholicity and communion to propose how the Primates' Meeting should function, as it surely must, as an Instrument of Communion.

The Ordinariate and Anglican Orders: a surprising work of the Spirit?

It is painful for Anglicans observing the first ordinations in the Ordinariate. The diplomatic courtesies of ecumenical relationships did, of course, require Archbishop Nichols of Westminster in his homily to refer to with generosity to Anglicanism:

I thank so many in the Church of England who have recognised your sincerity and integrity in making this journey and who have assured you of their prayers and good wishes. First among these is Rowan, Archbishop of Canterbury, with his characteristic insight, and generosity of heart and spirit.

It is striking, however, to note how Archbishop Nichols referred to the past ministry of John Broadhurst, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton. He went beyond the requirements of ecclesiastical diplomacy:

In welcoming you I recognise fully the demands of the journey you have made together with your families, with its many years of thought and prayer, painful misunderstandings, conflict and uncertainty. I want, in particular, to recognise your dedication as priests and bishops of the Church of England and affirm the fruitfulness of your ministry.

Normally those of us who have received holy orders within the Anglican tradition are politely - albeit pointedly - referred to as 'clergy' or 'ministers' by our Roman friends. Indeed, the statement issued today by the Vatican employs this very terminology: "former Anglican clergy". In the ordination homily, however, Nichols referred to Anglican priests.

Benedict has, of course, described the Ordinariate as "prophetic gesture" which furthers rather than undermines the Anglican-Roman Catholic search for unity. Nichols similarly stated in his homily:

It is to contribute to the wider goal of visible unity between our two Churches by helping us to know in practice how our patrimonies of faith and living can strengthen each other in our mission today.

Prophetic gestures sometimes take on a life of their own - the Spirit, after all, blows where it chooses. Would it not be a suitably surprising work of the Spirit if the establishment of the Ordinariate, leading to an appreciation by the Roman tradition of Anglicanism's vocation to and practice of catholicity, resulted in a reassessment of Apostolicae Curae?

More Than a Via Media

Welcome to catholicity and covenant.  Formerly this blog was More Than a Via Media (before a nasty technical error, Blogger and Google colluded to ensure otherwise!).

Catholicity and covenant will continue in the pattern of More Than a Via Media, seeking to provide a postliberal, communion-oriented perspective on Anglicanism.